Don’t Claim You Eat “Ancestral” If…

Don’t say you eat ancestral if you cook your steak in butter.
Don’t say you eat ancestral if your breakfast includes an avocado, a few almonds, a handful of blueberries, and a dollop of cashew nut butter.
Don’t say you eat ancestral if you talk macros over a collagen-maca-cacao smoothie.
Because here, we need to pause for a moment.

You want to talk about ancestral? Fine. But let’s start with the basics: what foods did our ancestors actually have access to? What products could a human from the Paleolithic era — the one you claim to emulate — see, touch, chew, digest? Because if you can’t answer this simple question, the discussion ends here. You’re not following an ancestral diet. You’re following a modern diet, marketed as “roots,” built on Instagram, with a sepia filter.

Butter: Born Long After Fire

Butter is not ancestral. It appeared with sedentism, animal domestication, and the use of rudimentary churns. In France, the earliest traces of butter date back to the Gauls, around 500 BC, but it only became widespread in the Middle Ages. In Canada, it became common only from the 17th century onward, with the arrival of French settlers and the establishment of stable dairy farming.

In other words: no hunter-gatherer in human history ever ate butter.

Avocado: A Geographic Joke

The avocado tree is a tropical plant native to Central America. The modern Hass avocado only appeared in the 20th century through hybridization. It arrived in France in the 1960s, and in Canada a bit later, via Mexican imports.

No European, no Inuit, no Aboriginal, no Sami has ever seen or touched an avocado. This fruit is a logistical anomaly. You eat it today thanks to airplanes, refrigerators, oil, and Californian marketing. You want to call it ancestral? Seriously?

Almonds: Originally Toxic

Wild almonds are toxic. They contain amygdalin, which releases cyanide. The sweet varieties you snack on come from agricultural selection dating back to Antiquity but were only cultivated on a large scale in France in the 19th century, and even later in Canada.

Their current accessibility is made possible by intensive agriculture, especially in California, processing, and pasteurization. Our ancestors? They wouldn’t have been able to digest them without getting sick.

Dark Chocolate, Coffee, Tea, Bananas, Olive Oil…

Want to talk authenticity? Then let’s talk dates.

Chocolate: imported to Europe in the 16th century with Spanish colonists.

Coffee: introduced in France around 1644, in Marseille.

Tea: commercially widespread from the 17th century, originating from China.

Bananas: introduced to Europe in the 19th century.

Modern olive oil: cold extraction standardized in the 20th century.

And almond butters, oat milk, coconut flours, natural sweeteners, carnivore-friendly bars made with Manuka honey and Madagascar vanilla pods… Do you really think we’re still living an ancestral lifestyle? Do you really believe a Homo sapiens spent their day pressing chia seeds between spear throws?

The Word Ancestral Has Meaning. And It’s Harsh.

Our ancestors ate what they found. Rancid animal fat, warm blood, marrow, skin, cartilage, sometimes harsh plants rich in tannins, starchy roots fermented in earth pits. They didn’t eat for pleasure. Nor for macros. They ate to survive. No blender. No filter. No snack.

Saying you eat ancestral with your ghee butter on low-carb almond flour bread… is like saying you live like a wolf because you sleep on a fur rug in front of Netflix.

Think about it.

Why do you need to use the word “ancestral” to validate your plate? Why cling to a fantasized past you haven’t even bothered to understand? Why are those influencers preaching “instinct, biology, the truth of the body” unable to name the first appearance date of the foods they recommend?

Because without this minimum intellectual honesty, your whole argument collapses.

So ask yourself this question, and dare to answer it in the comments:
What do you really need? A connection to the living? Or a comfortable concept that sounds good on a story?